Archive for October, 2010

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

There are many types of photography, but all of them aim to achieve the same basic principle: to stop time. The role of the photographer is to choose what portion of space is to be frozen in time, for what length of time, and what is the focus of the image. I have personally become quite accustomed to journalistic photography, which focuses primarily on capturing people and places in action. Most of my blog so far has displayed this form of photography, capturing BotS in many of the unique locations we visit, usually pointing at, picking up, or sampling some […]

Monday, October 25th, 2010

During this week’s nature photography project, one thing stuck with me: “Slow down.” Cub Khan, a nature photographer, came to Lewisburg this week to instruct us how to use our cameras to photograph nature. While instructing us on the use of tripods, Cub mentioned that they unintentionally force you to slow down and examine what you do. Below is a photo tour of where we went this past week: Bucknell, Bucknell Natural Area, Tall Timbers Old Growth Forest, Northumberland and Montandon Marsh. The Susquehanna River Symposium also taught me to slow down and examine the river’s watershed with smaller ideas […]

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Last week, we focused on the river towns of the Susquehanna River. We focused on the small towns that surround the Lewisburg area and went on a tour led by Bucknell Professor Ben Marsh of Environmental Studies and Geography. The tour was very interesting and I learned a lot about Pennsylvania’s traditional social structure. Our first stop, the Pennsdale Meeting House, was built just like the other small homes in the area and as Professor Marsh explained, it was because when the building was built in the 1700s, everyone had the same social core, a conservative ideal with a strong […]

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Once again based on campus, the BotS crew continues to examine the many different aspects of the Susquehanna River watershed. Starting at the headwaters of Buffalo Creek, we had the opportunity on Monday to take a variety of water quality samples as the creek progresses toward the Susquehanna River. In the mountains, with water flowing through inert bedrock, the stream is highly responsive to changes in acidity. Due to concerns of acid rain affecting the ecology of this portion of Buffalo Creek, the local watershed alliance has constructed a set of artificial wetlands that filter the water through limestone and […]

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Day II: October 7, 2010 (…Continued) After a morning spent hearing a history rarely told in Western schools, we had lunch at one of the Onondaga Nation’s two significant income sources, a multi-million dollar enclosed lacrosse area. The arena is currently being converted for the season into a hockey rink, to which former BU LAX coach Jameison quipped, “Hockey just keeps you in shape for lacrosse.” Across the parking lot is the other income source for the Onodaga, a cigarette store capable of selling tobacco products tax-free. Yet this source of income is controversial, as the tribal leaders would rather […]

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

It has been said that the beginning is a very good place to start, but the subject of the Susquehanna River is so broad and diverse that it has taken until Week 7 to reach the source of the river. This past week has brought the Bucknell on the Susquehanna crew to a wide variety of historically and culturally significant locations in the upper reaches of the watershed. Leaving Wednesday afternoon on Bus #4, we spent two and a half days in the Finger Lakes region of New York State exploring Native American culture, ecosemiotics (I’m still not convinced that’s […]

Monday, October 11th, 2010

This week’s focus was on the headwaters of the Susquehanna. Over two and a half days the BotS Mobile made its way from Lewisburg to Wapwallopen, Pa., then on to Cortland, N.Y., Onondaga, N.Y., and finally Cooperstown, N.Y. On the drive to New York, we took a break in Wapwallopen and hiked into a small forest where there is a very pretty scenic overlook that shows a vast look at the Susquehanna River valley, complete with the Berwick nuclear plant across the river. You can see where the nuclear plant’s water intake is and it makes me wonder how the […]

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

It’s amazing how things move in cycles. Coal, lumber, oil and now natural gas have created many boom and bust cycles for Pennsylvania. Marcellus Shale, the next boom and bust cycle, is a very controversial topic in Pennsylvania and New York because of the negative impacts it has on the land and those who live on the land. Thursday we went to Dimock, Pa., a town that has been severely impacted by the drilling of natural gas wells. The process of hydrofracking the shale bedrock to release the natural gas involves sending hundreds of gallons of water under high pressure […]

Monday, October 4th, 2010

Even as Pennsylvania recovers from the after-effects of the coal and logging booms, another natural resource has been discovered within the borders of the Commonwealth, the Marcellus Shale. Over the millennia, the 300 million-year-old shale has been compressed and cooked by the heat of the earth’s core, producing natural gas trapped in the tight layers of the rock. To extract the methane from the rock, the gas industry has pioneered the use of two specific methods to extract the valuable resource from its present location approximately a mile beneath the surface of the Appalachian Plateau: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. […]

Places I've Been

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